Extending the power of subsea cables to drive your business growth

As the demand for content continues to explode globally, so too does the need for global high bandwidth connectivity.

The hunger for bandwidth isn’t tipped to slow up anytime soon, with Cisco’s Visual Networking Index predicting that internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa is set to grow six-fold by 2020 to 10.9 Exabytes per month. Traffic in the Asia Pacific region is also forecast to increase three-fold to 67.8 Exabytes per month over the same period.

This burgeoning bandwidth demand as well as how to best utilise subsea cable connectivity were the main topics of the recent Subsea EMEA conference, which took place in the major subsea landing point Marseille last week.

As part of the event, I presented on how to extend subsea connectivity through software defined networks. The presentation highlighted the fact that it’s all well and good to have connectivity running between continents via subsea cables; however unless you have access to a dense network once the traffic hits land, then it will be difficult to carry your traffic reliably and securely to end users.

The Colt IQ Network, not only connects to the major subsea landing points across EMEA, Asia Pacific and the US, but it also connects to more than 26,000 buildings and 850 data centres globally.

Colt’s portal-based On Demand functionality also allows businesses to flex their bandwidth up and down in near real time, as well as allowing companies to get closer to the cloud with Colt’s Direct Cloud Access offering. This means that Colt is putting businesses in control of an agile, living network that creates new global business opportunities.

A recent report from the University of Huddersfield in Schofield found that at least £65 billion of economic activity in the UK each year relies on the subsea cables industry, with the vast amount of internet traffic being carried by subsea cables. So this means it’s crucial to work with a connectivity partner that not only connects to the critical subsea landing points, but also has the terrestrial network to carry traffic to where businesses need it to go.

Mike Kennedy is the Head of International Carriers at Colt Technology Services.

Protect sensitive data in motion with Colt IQ Network Encryption Services. Effective network security relies on multiple layers of defence, not just at the edge and core of the network but also along the network path. …